Vision, Focus and IP, a powerful mix

I would like to share the following fascinating story with you. It is about a person who has a very clear vision and focus, and I am proud to cooperate with him and be part of his amazing journey. This person is named Antoon Buitenhuis, founder and managing director of the limited liability company Siron. To my opinion, Antoon's mission or better yet, Siron's mission may best be described as: "saving lives".

Dry Deluge Testing

Antoon and his small team have developed two technologies that will safe many lives, and he is now slowly starting to earn money with both of them. The first technology, for which the first patent applications originate form 2012, concerns dry testing of open fire extinguishing systems. This technology avoids system corrosion and blockage.

One of the very first real life tests on an offshore gas production platform.

For this technology, Antoon developed a high performance smoke generator and special dedicated smoke precursors, such that tests can be performed in all circumstances, even with the harsh conditions in offshore oil and gas facilities. This has been quite a daunting challenge, and numerous tests have been performed in smoke distribution, specific smoke density, sufficient flow, sufficient pressure drop etc. etc.

Most of the tests I have taken part of, and we had definitively fun calibrating our volume flow measurement devices, by driving around with it in a car, while checking speed on a GPS locator. Also our numerous, quite unconventional smoke density measurements took some attention, since cautious neighbors more than once thought that Siron's premises took fire.

Now that the first real life tests have proven invariably superior to conventional seawater testing on several off shore production platforms, the offshore world is rapidly switching from conventional seawater testing to Antoon's technology. This technology has even proven to be so revolutionizing, that regulatory authorities are considering to prescribe his method as mandatory testing. For this, regulatory bodies around the globe are now scrutinizing this game changing invention.

In the early days, like most entrepreneurs, Antoon had too little resources to finance his patent protection. Since I was so convinced about this technology, we agreed that I would write the first patent applications, and be paid for it, after Siron became successful in licensing the technology. Well, it has proven to a good investment and the right strategy. Now, four years down the road, clients are lining up for a license, of which the underlying technology is considered patentable by the relevant patent authorities.

Domestic Sprinkler

The second technology, in which I was involved primarily for the patenting part, is the domestic low pressure sprinkler. This technology, Siron developed in cooperation with BAM, a Dutch construction company and Jomos, a Swiss Sprinkler manufacturer. Here, Antoon and his partners developed a new Sprinkler head, that is specifically adapted for low pressure water lines.

This invention is a ingenious combination on on the one hand specifically adapted sprinkler heads and on the other hand a specifically designed grid of sprinkler heads. Also this technology is now considered patentable by the relevant patent authorities, and is likely to be licensed out soon.

First domestic Sprinklers, in the corporate identity colors of BAM

While the dry deluge testing will definitively save offshore workers lives sooner or later, the domestic sprinkler will safe even many more, one day maybe even yours or mine!

Besides these in house developed products, Antoon has licensed in some technologies from foreign IP holders. One further remarkable product concerns compressed-air foam, a specific relatively dense and sticky foam that builds a covering blanket over many surfaces. This blanket can virtually suffocate any fire and is typically suited for chemical industries. Also this technology will safe lives.

Compressed-air generated foam, building a covering blanket on all surfaces at MSD, Oss

Behind these products is a truly remarkable person, someone who strongly disagrees with me about his mission, a person who is humble in his being, and extremely dedicated in the progression of his company. Antoon for sure is going to be extraordinary successful with all of these ground breaking technologies. Why? because he understood and applied the powerful mix of vision, focus and IP.



Hendrik de Lange

Double Dutch, why to file two instead of one Dutch patent application

Sometimes it is essential to get a patent, published together with a positive written opinion, given out by the Dutch Patent Authority.

One of the reasons is the innovation box. Dutch tax inspectors are now studying in detail your written opinions and are likely not to accept the reduced tax regime under the innovation box, if the written opinion is negative about the patentability of the invention.

And believe me, most written opinions are negative.....

How to repair this? 

Well there is nothing to do to repair this negative opinion in the same patent application. This is because the written opinion is only an opinion, not an appealable decision. 

So how to cope with this unfavorable situation of having filed a patent application and having received a negative written opinion? 

Well by filing a second application, with much more restricted claims, such that it is almost impossible for the patent examiner in question to issue a negative written opinion on this second patent application. 

Are you interested in how to strategically best cope with this issue and get the exact details on how to deal with it, please send me an email, I will be happy to advice you. 

Thank you for reading my blog, 

Hendrik de Lange 

500 years of patents in the Netherlands

Some statistics

The first Dutch patent, based on a technical principle was granted on October 24, 1515, almost 5 centuries ago. During the past five hundred years neat and highly accurate statistics on the number of patents granted in the Netherlands can be reconstructed. The first three centuries of patents granted in the Netherlands are represented in the following image. The number of patents is depicted per decade, running up to the date indicated on the abscissa.

Here we can see a steep rise in the number of patents in the start of the 17th century, the golden age of the Netherlands. The golden age came to an end strikingly similar with the strong decline in patent numbers at the turn of the centuries. Patent numbers dropped from around 100 per decade in the mid 17th century to less than 10 per decade in the mid 18th century; a true decimation.

The data from 1800 to 1950 are certainly not less interesting, as can be seen in the following image:

Here, the number of patent per year had risen from about 0-1 during the French era (1795-1810) under the various French patent laws to about 160 a year shortly before the abolition of the Patent law in 1869. That moment, a pitch dark age of absence of any patent system started in the Netherlands, which lasted up to 1912. Those 41 Years, the Netherlands had to cope with no patent system whatsoever.

After the new Dutch patent law of 1910 had entered into force on 1912, the numbers of patents granted started to rise again, to about 3000 a year, before the 1929 crises hit. From the early 1930ies to the end of the 2nd world war, numbers fell again. After the war, things could only go up, as the following image show:

From 1980 the number of granted Dutch patents start to rise spectacularly. Shortly before 1980, the European Patent Office started to grant European Patents designated for the Netherlands. The steep rise went up to about 53000 patents granted with effect in the Netherlands in 2012. In 2013 a small decline in granted patents was seen, though it appears that in 2014, growth will pick up again.

To depict the whole 5 centuries in one image, I have made use of logarithmic plot, since the orders of magnitude differ so much during this complete time span. From this figure, it is striking that after the 17th century maximum, it lasted about two full centuries before these patent numbers were reached again. That time, in 1830, the industrial revolution was already on its way.
 

Why Bother?

Why is this all so important? Well first of all it is fascinating to know that already five centuries ago, people started to realize that ingenuity needed a reward of some kind. This  reward was given in form of a temporary monopoly.

Lately, there have been quite some discussion about the uses and benefits of a patent system. Especially the questions "do patents benefit society?" and "do patents hinder the development of technology?" are increasingly posed by patent-critics.

I hope to find answers to these questions in these old and long time spanning statistical data. Answers to these questions are notoriously difficult to give in modern times, since both patent numbers and wealth seem to have risen almost constantly, ever since the industrial revolution. See my earlier blogs on this topic [3, 4, 5]. Here some strong positive correlations between patent numbers and wealth are depicted, however causalities are way more difficult to prove.  

I am now trying to find long term accurate Dutch wealth statistics, such that a neat comparison can be made, and hopefully some more solid conclusions on the effects of patents on wealth and prosperity can be drawn...

Cant wait to have more on this fascinating topic!


Literature and sources:

[1] Federico, P. J., 1964: Historical Patent Statistics 1791 – 1961, in: Journal of the Patent Office Society (46), No. 2, S. 112-116.

[2] Doorman, G. 1940: Octrooien voor uitvindingen in de Nederlanden uit de 16de-18de eeuw. 's-Gravenhage 1940.

[3] http://octrooifabriek.blogspot.nl/2014/01/patents-do-contribute-to-prosperity.html

[4] http://octrooifabriek.blogspot.nl/2014/01/patents-do-contribute-to-prosperity-ii.html

[5] http://octrooifabriek.blogspot.nl/2013/11/should-we-abolish-our-patent-systems.html

Patent number one

Patent number 1

For those who have some time left to play around, a neat game is looking for the very first patents issued. For this exercise, a look in the EPO databases [1], the USPTO databases [2] or the WIPO databases [3] may be sufficient.

Quite astonishing, the patents bearing number 1, i.e.: US1, DE1, FR1, US1, NL1 etc. do exist, and can be retrieved from the various databases. Even more astonishing, at least in the Netherlands, the NL1 is not the first Dutch patent at all.

The very first Dutch patent was issued in the year 1515 [4]. almost four hundred years earlier than the issue date of NL1. This patent was issued while there was no codified patent law, and the powers of the monopoly including a punishment for the infringer was stated in the document itself. From this year up to the French era, a number of 1081 Dutch patents have thus been granted.

In the year 1809 finally, the Dutch King Lodewijk Napoleon (the French ruler in the Netherlands) issued a first codified (mini)patent law, which was superseded in 1810 by the original French patent law from 1791. Finally in 1817 a new Dutch patent law was issued, which was abolished in 1869. when the true dark ages of our beloved patent system had started. Only in 1912 a new patent law was reinstated in the Netherlands, and only under this law, the NL1 was issued on April 3, 1913.

During the French rule, only 7 patents were granted. In the era thereafter, under the patent law of 1817 until its sad abolishment in 1869, a number of 4541 Dutch patents have been granted.

Adding up: Before our assumed first Dutch patent, Nl1 already 5629 Dutch patents have been issued.

It is about time to fill this gap, and get these great sources of historic literature and culture in the Espacenet databases! Examiners love to cite historic disclosures, well here is an excellent opportunity to extend the body of "state of the art".
 
And more importantly, it is pure fun looking in these documents full of ancient technologies....


Sources/Literature

[1] European Patent Office http://www.espacenet.org/

[2] United States Patent and Trademark Office http://www.uspto.gov

[3] World Intellectual Property Organisation http://www.wipo.int

[4] G. Doorman, "Octrooien voor uitvindingen in de Nederlanden uit de 16e-18e eeuw", den Haag (1940)

Patents do contribute to prosperity II

If we plot the number of patents granted in the USA against the GDP for the last 200 years, the following graph emerges:

Well there is a clear correlation between the number of patents granted and the GDP/capita.

Do patents contribute to prosperity? YES THEY DO!


Sources:

[1] Gap Minder: http://www.gapminder.org/data/  Data on GDP/cap in PPP US$ 2005: Gross Domestic Product per capita by Purchasing Power Parities (in international dollars, fixed 2005 prices). The inflation and differences in the cost of living between countries has been taken into account.

[2] Statistical website of the USPTO:  http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm

[3] Federico, P. J., 1964: Historical Patent Statistics 1791 – 1961, in: Journal of the Patent Office Society (46), No. 2, S. 112-116.

Patents do contribute to prosperity!

If we plot a wealth indicator and the number of granted patents, there should be shown some correlation. In the following graph, the number of Dutch granted patents was plotted against the GDP per capita (in international 2005 dollars) in the Netherlands [1].

Well not much to our surprise, there is indeed a nice correlation.... and the along the data points, neatly, the time evolves from 1800 in the utmost lefthand side lower corner to 2012, in the utmost righthand side upper corner.

Some strange things happen, e.g. in 1978, when the first European patents granted with effect for the Netherlands came to live. The number of patents increased massively, whereas the growth in GDP per capita didn't. Actually, in the late 70ties and early 80ties there was a quite severe economic downturn.

from 1800 till 1979 there was a very steep correlation between the number of patents granted and the growth of wealth in the Netherlands. One important factor in this is, much to my believe, the very strict granting policy of the former Dutch patent authority, de Octrooiraad.

In the 90ties, we see even a decade of reversed correlation, the number of patents granted for the netherlands decreased, whereas economy was booming. This effect is greatly due to the backlog building up at the premises of the European Patent Office, suffering from their enormous success.

 In the last decade, there appears to be again a decoupling of our economic fitness and the number of patents granted. Here again, it appears that though inventive power is extreme, economy is not (yet) picking up. To my opinion, the rise in patents granted will most certainly boost economy in the near future, such that the correlation is regained.

One remark though, a correlation is different from a causality. Correlation is relative easy to proof, causality is a lot more difficult. This being said, I do conclude, yet again, that patents do contribute to prosperity!

It is simply to difficult to ignore...



source:

[1] Gap Minder: http://www.gapminder.org/data/  Data on GDP/cap in PPP US$ 2005: Gross Domestic Product per capita by Purchasing Power Parities (in international dollars, fixed 2005 prices). The inflation and differences in the cost of living between countries has been taken into account.

Should we abolish our patent systems?

Holland, a most remarkable country!

In the Netherlands, in 1869 it was decided by the then residing government to abolish the entire Dutch patent system. The wave of a liberal spirit through Western Europe came to full expression in this courageous act of folly. In that time, patents were thought to delimit the free trade, to counteract innovation and to provide an unfair position to the holder of the patent. The patent system was believed to reduce economic prosperity [1].

Well did it really? Let us study some statistics to find some answers! 

Only in 1910, again a new Dutch patent law was adopted, which entered into force in 1912, 43 years after its abolision. Let us study the GDP per capita of the Netherlands and of its neighboring countries in this "patent absent era" to find some indicators: These GDP per capita data are meticulously collected by Gapminder [2]:

  

 In 1860, the GDP/cap in the Netherlands was 10% higher that that of Belgium and 20% higher that that of Germany. In 1913, the GDP/cap in Belgium had surpassed that of the Netherlands by 14%, and the German GDP/cap surpassed that of the Netherlands by 29%. In this period, in the Netherlands GDP/cap grew about 47%, whereas it grew 85% in Belgium and 122% in Germany. 

During the Dutch "patent absent era", the Netherlands had missed a tremendous growth in wealth in comparison to it neighbors. From leading in wealth, it became lagging in wealth.  

Conclusion

So those advocating abolishment of the patent system proved wrong, very wrong indeed! 

Sources

[1] "Nederland, een Volk van Struikrovers?", F. Gerzon, den Haag, (1986), p.10-25

[2] Gap Minder: http://www.gapminder.org/data/  Data on GDP/cap in PPP US$ 2005: Gross Domestic Product per capita by Purchasing Power Parities (in international dollars, fixed 2005 prices). The inflation and differences in the cost of living between countries has been taken into account.